Clinical Scholar Preparation: An Approach That Works.

The Colorado Center for Nursing Excellence established a formal didactic course in 2005 to deliberately prepare clinical faculty using expert clinical nurses. Independently, the National League for Nursing, in 2018, established criteria for certification for clinical nurse educators. The content of this course content closely mirrors those competencies and provides preparation for the exam. As a result, Clinical Scholars have established themselves as important players in nursing education in Colorado.

Maximizing Learning Opportunities in Interprofessional Clinical Environments Through Precepting.

Effective precepting requires a separate skill set than being an expert clinician, which is something that is often overlooked. Deliberate preparation should include utilization of effective communication techniques, teaching using powerful questions, developing skills for feedback and evaluation, as well as others. Becoming a highly functioning member of an interprofessional team requires special consideration and preparation that can enhance the nurses' role. [J Contin Educ Nurs. 2018;49(12):545-546.].

Preparing Educators to Implement Flipped Classrooms as a Teaching Strategy.

Educators are not able to change teaching strategies unless they have experience with a new strategy. A 4-hour course was developed to support educators to teach differently.

Evaluation of a model for preparing staff nurses to teach clinical groups of nursing students.

Expert staff nurses were identified as Clinical Scholars to teach clinical rotations of nursing students. A 40-hour workshop was developed to present the skills and knowledge necessary to begin as a new clinical faculty member. This article reports the descriptive analysis of the data collected during the life of this funded project. Although this project was undertaken to increase faculty resources, the data also showed increased job satisfaction among Clinical Scholars, increased patient safety, and high student satisfaction.

Childbearing families: implementation of the Clinical Scholar Model for clinical teaching.

This conceptual article describes a model for the development of clinical instructors/faculty, called Clinical Scholars that addresses the needs in times of shortage and economic limitations. The authors present a solution for one of the bottlenecks to the nursing workforce pipeline, which may be further replicated. The model was conceptualized to address not only the quantity of available clinical instructors but also the quality of the preparation of these instructors. As faculty members in the Clinical Scholar course, the authors describe the model as applicable to teaching in the perinatal clinical setting. Included is a brief review of the literature providing a foundation for the model, the curriculum, and the strategies utilized in the 40-hour didactic course. An example of the successful utilization of the model for perinatal nursing is included.